Holy...

https://x.com/RotoSurgeon/status/1806424983918477606?s=19

And he ends up with the Utah Jazz.

THIS girl?

https://gossipnextdoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Cai...

That's her

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/kyle-filipowski-...

She’s 27 or 28 and he’s 20. It appears there is much family drama.

Aren't all men groomed by their eventual wives? I have a friend from high school whose girlfriend took his checkbook away from him a year before marriage. He hasn't written a check since.

OK. I get it.

Yes, this is the way we are all when it comes to most people in our lives.

I think that there is a notion that our political, religious, whatever else, views are determined by what is best for us in a self-centered manner. I think that's true but mostly not in the way people think. If you are a college student you'll probably be in favor of more subsidy for state colleges. If you're retired you'll probably be against cutting Social Security. That's true. But I think much more so than this type of thinking our self centered views come from not wanting to turn those that form our support group against us and this risk losing their support. That's purely self-centered just like the first type but I think a lot more common and a lot more problematic. The second type is a lot more difficult to get someone introspective about.

I think you can judge how much someone truly cares about an issue, and even perhaps the primary judge of their character, is how much they demand that the way they currently view the world come under attack. If you don't do that you clearly don't care about if what you believe is true but only care about your own personal comfort regarding the issue.

As I enter middle age I am always wary about how older people always have tended to view the world as a better place when they were younger. It clearly isn't true. Most 70 year olds I have known thought the world was better 40 years ago. Hardly anyone is any era of recent human history would want to live 300 years ago though all 10 generations in the interim probably thought the world was better when they were young before they died. Our brain is flawed to view the world as better when we had more optimism and energy. When I sit and think I realize that nearly everything in the world is better now than it was when I was a student at Ohio 30 years ago. But the one think that I see as having undergone a major decline is just what I was talking about. The typical American lacks the character to withstand having any of their beliefs challenged, not because they care about any issue, but because if they allow the challenge they might lose the support of those closest to them. I might regard this failing as arguably the worst of all possible failings. No state has any chance of remaining both free and productive at the same time unless it has that character. It might be the grumpy old man in me starting to but this lack of character leads to tribalism and disfunction that can only end in authoritarianism. What you are saying in that ever man allows their wife to groom them and vice versa is in my mind that on its most basic level.

Yeah, NOW.

She went to his high school prom.

Deep dive Victory, well thought out and interesting thoughts.